Research Interests

My research concentrates on the way the vertebrate retina works. The retina is a fairly ordinary piece of brain but it has several unique advantages. First, the retina is easy to work with. Many retinae will stay alive and healthy in a dish. Second, the retina is not too complicated. There are only 5 main kinds of neuron in the retina and we understand in outline how they are wired together. Third, we know everything about what goes into the retina (patterns of light) and quite a lot about what comes out (patterns of activity in ganglion cells). Lastly, and perhaps most important, we understand what the retina is for. This crucial understanding allows us to consider how the neural machinery of the retina is designed to accomplish its task.